Lilia Akhaimova had a somewhat underwhelming performance at the 2021 Russian Championships, making mistakes on both vault and floor on the first day of competition and having trouble on all four events on the second day.
She came to the competition with nagging foot pain and, apparently, on the second day she suffered an ankle injury. She told R-Sport that she will probably withdraw from the event finals:
“I injured my foot, the ankle. Most likely, I’m ending [my competition here].”
After the qualification, Akhaimova said that foot pain has been bothering her during the training process but she was still able to power through:
“Generally, the preparation went well, we worked a lot. The only issue is that my health is letting me down a bit because my foot hurts, but doctors help a lot, so I manage to withstand the training load.”
Akhaimova finished 5th in qualification but the second day of competition brought her down to the 7th place in the standings and she scored almost three points lower than the first day. At the moment, she is still on the start lists for event finals. She qualified to the finals on vault, beam, and floor.
The competition continues today with event finals at 12:00 local time (5am ET, 1am PT).
It will be streamed live on the federation’s website.
Full schedule of the competition can be found here.
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